Connected Home Audio

Quit Having Audio In Only One Room - These Speakers Are The Future Of Sound

Setting up an integrated, multi-room home audio system used to require thousands of dollars in investment and a professional audio installer. Now a quick trip to Best Buy can put millions upon millions of songs at your fingertips, in every room of your home. The plug-and-play, connected audio system market was all Sonos for years, but it’s growing quickly, with a number of brands stepping up to fill your home with music.

The Reigning Champion: Sonos

Sonos has been doing multi-room audio right for more than a decade. Its line includes the all-in-one Play speakers, Connect stereo components and Playbar sound bar. You can wire a given component straight to your router or connect wirelessly over the company’s dedicated HiFi network with the Bridge. All the Sonos units in your home can be easily managed with the wireless-device app/desktop controller, and you can play different music on each speaker or synchronize the entire system.

Pros: When it comes to streaming, content is king. Sonos’ decade-long head start allowed it to compile quite an impressive roster of compatible streaming services. Sonos gives you effortless, around-home access to Last.fm, Pandora, Rdio, Rhapsody, SiriusXM, Slacker, Spotify and a bunch of others. You also have the 100,000+ neatly organized stations of TuneIn Internet radio to flip through. The recently added universal search function makes it easier to quickly pinpoint the music you want.

Cons: Growing up without much competition, Sonos never had to be concerned with competitive pricing, and some of its pricing seems out of whack. You have to buy the $50 Bridge separately just to make the speaker system wireless, a feature that should come out of the box with any “wireless speaker” in 2014. Sonos says the advantage of this dedicated network is in an enhanced, uninterrupted connection, but at least a small percentage of its listeners report problems with components dropping connections.

Then there’s the $349 price tag of the Connect. This unit hooks up to an existing stereo, making it a part of the greater Sonos system. The Connect does offer some handy features, such as the line input that exports music from a stereo input (e.g. CD player) to all the speakers in the system. Still, a basic, plug-and-play solution priced closer to $100 media streamers like Apple TV and Roku would be a nice option, even if Sonos had to drop some features.

The Challenger: Samsung Shape

Samsung has developed a bit of a reputation for…how shall we say this, watching its competitors closely and showering them with the flattery of imitation. Its Shape series looks a whole lot like Sonos’ lineup, but with a couple of interesting advantages and add-ons. The all-in-one Shape speakers hard-connect directly to your router or go wireless with the available Hub, which uses dual-band Wi-Fi. As with Sonos, the Shape system gives you full control with an app, and the speakers can play individually or synchronized.

Pros: The first thing you’ll naturally notice about the Shape is, well, its shape. The triangular M5 and M7 speaker enclosures are built for versatility. You can lay them down, stand them up and fit them neatly in a corner. Samsung also rolls Bluetooth functionality into the line, something Sonos does not offer, giving you the option of easily playing music directly from your phone or other Bluetooth device. The Link Mate stereo component can connect to CD player and other hard sources for play on your entire system, just as the Sonos Connect does.

Samsung launched the Shape line last fall with the M7 speaker, adding the M5 earlier this year. That makes the primary line smaller than Sonos’, but Samsung has integrated some functionality into other products, including wireless syncing with select smart TVs, which turns Shape speakers into satellite TV speakers. Given Samsung’s wide range of home entertainment products, we could see the Shape ecosystem spreading in a way that a small, audio-specific company like Sonos can’t match.

Cons: Samsung offers a handful of music streaming options, including your collection, Pandora, Rhapsody and TuneIn Radio, but it lags well behind Sonos. In terms of pricing, it has once again followed Sonos’ playbook closely, with a $400 M7 flagship speaker, $350 Link Mate stereo system component and $50 Wireless Audio Hub. The M5 speaker is priced at $250, falling right between the Sonos Play:1 and Play:3. It would be great if Samsung separated itself with lower pricing, but instead it basically photocopied Sonos’ price list.